CHAPTER XXXIV

NON-MERCENARY SECRECY

Having thus, according to plan discussed Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, we may be interested in scattered points which do not fall under any of the former topics.

(First, as to language). It is said that each Greek novice was ordered to use his native language, as they did not approve of the use of a foreign language. Foreigners joined the Pythagoreans: Messenians, Lucani, Picentini, and Romans. Metrodorus, the son of Thyrsus, who was the father of Epicharmus, who specialised in medicine, in explaining his father's writings to his brother, says that Epicharmus, and prior to him Pythagoras, conceived that the best dialect, and the most musical, was the Doric. The Ionic and Aeolic remind of chromatic progression, which however is still more evident in the Attic. The Doric, consisting of pronounced letters, is enharmonic.

The myths also bear witness to the antiquity of this dialect. Nereus was said to have married Doris, the daughter of Ocean; by whom he had fifty daughters, one of whom was the mother of Achilles. Metrodorus also says that some insist that Helen was the offspring of Deucalion, who was the son of Prometheus and Pyrrha the daughter of Epimetheus; and from him descended Dorus and Aeolus. Further he observes that from the Babylonian sacred rites he had learned that Helen was the offspring of Jupiter, and that the sons of Hellen were Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus; with which Herodotus also agrees. Accuracy in particulars so ancient is difficult for moderns, to enable them to decide which of the accounts is most trustworthy. But either of them claim that the Doric dialect is the most ancient, that the Aeolic, whose name derives it from Aeolus, is the next age, and that the third is the Ionic, derived from Ion, the son of Xuthus. Fourth is the Attic, formed from Creusa, the daughter of Erechtheus, who is three generations younger than the others; as it existed about the time of the Thracians and the rape of Orithyia, as is evident from the testimony of most histories. The Doric dialect was also used by the most ancient of the poets, Orpheus..... (repetition).

The Pythagoreans objected to those who offered disciplines for sale, who open their souls like the gates of an inn to every man that approaches them; and who, if they do not thus [have] buyers, diffuse themselves through cities, [so] in short, hire gymnasia, and require a reward from young men for those things that are without price. Pythagoras indeed hid the meaning of much that was said by him, in order that those who were genuinely instructed might clearly partakers of it; but that others, as Homer says of Tantalus, might be pained in the midst of what they heard, in consequence of receiving no delight therefrom.

The Pythagoreans thought that those who teach for the sake of reward, that they show themselves worse than sculptors, or artists who perform [the] work sitting. For these, when someone orders [wood] to make a statue of Hermes, search for wood suited to receive the proper form; while those pretend that they can readily produce the works of virtue from every nature. The Pythagoreans likewise said that it is more necessary to pay attention to philosophy than to parents or agriculture; for no doubt it is owing to the latter that we live, but philosophers and preceptors are the causes of our living well, and becoming wise, on discovering the right mode of discipline and instruction.

Nor did they think fit either to speak or write in such a way such that their conceptions might be obvious to the first comer; for the very first thing Pythagoras is said to have taught is that, being purified from all intemperance, his disciples should preserve the doctrines they have heard in silence. It is accordingly reported that he who first divulged the theory of commensurable and incommensurable quantities to those unworthy to receive it was by the Pythagoreans so hated that they not only expelled him from their common association, and from living with him, but also for him constructed a tomb, as for one who had migrated from the human into another life. It is also reported that the Divine Power was so indignant with those who divulged the teachings of Pythagoras, that he perished at sea, as an impious person who divulged the method of inscribing in a sphere the dodecahedron, one of the five so-called solid figures, the composition of the icostagonus. But according to others, this is what happened to him who revealed the doctrine of rational and incommensurable quantities.

All Pythagoric discipline was symbolic, resembling riddles and puzzles, and consisting of maxims, in the style of the ancients. Likewise the truly divine Pythian oracles seem to be somewhat difficult of understanding and explanation; to those who carelessly receive the answers given. These are the indications about Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans collected from tradition.